NASCAR playoffs at Martinsville: Results, takeaways 10.29.17

Kyle Busch advanced to the championship race for the third consecutive year with his win on Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, but there are other implications from the race as well. Here are the three biggest takeaways from Sunday’s First Data 500 race:

1. One golden ticket down has been punched

For all the drama that went down on Sunday, the easiest takeaway is that Kyle Busch won and in doing so, he earned his spot in the championship race at Homestead. This will be the third year in a row that Busch races for the NASCAR Cup Series championship, winning it in 2015, and he has as good a chance as anyone to win it again this season. Busch likely could have advanced to the final four on points had he not won one of the three races in this stage of the playoffs, but locking down his golden ticket early isn’t a bad thing. The driver who won at Martinsville last year and clinched his spot in Homestead early was Jimmie Johnson, who went on to win the championship… If anything, that bodes well for Busch.

2. Poor Chase Elliott, who deserves to be mad

Chase Elliott has somehow still never won a Cup Series race, but the fact that he consistently comes in second – he’s done so six times so far in his short career – makes that even harder to deal with. It looked like he would finally make it into Victory Lane at Martinsville, leading with 38 laps to go. But Keselowski passed him then, and when Elliott regained the lead with four laps to go, Denny Hamlin punted him into the wall and prevented him from getting the win. Hamlin and Elliott are both fighting to make it into the final four and race for a championship, but after the race, they deservedly got into a spat. You have to feel for Elliott, who called what Hamlin did, “over the line,” after the race. When a win would be your first ever in the Cup Series, not to mention punching your golden ticket to the championship race, you can see why Elliott would be as upset as was. But if he keeps doing what he’s doing, and he keeps racing as well as he has in the first two years of his career so far, then that first win isn’t too far off.

Denny Hamlin, center, leaves the track after Sunday’s NASCAR Cup series auto race at Martinsville Speedway. Hamlin wrecked with Chase Elliott during the last few laps of the race.

Steve Helber AP

3. Who else has a shot at a championship spot?

All season long, talk about Homestead has centered on three drivers: Kyle Busch, Kyle Larson and Martin Truex Jr. With Larson shockingly eliminated last season and Busch now having clinched his spot in the championship race, Truex is the only one of the three whose future is still undetermined. Still, he narrowly finished second at Martinsville and has built up such a points lead that him missing the final four seems practically unimaginable. So, other than Truex, which other two drivers might make it to Homestead? Kevin Harvick came from behind and finished fifth at Martinsville, and he’s been solid all season. It’s impossible to count out Jimmie Johnson based on his championship pedigree, but he hasn’t been as good as he was in past winning seasons. There’s still two races to be run, but if you had to make a guess now, I’d say Harvick and Keselowski end up with Truex and Busch in Homestead.